Firewall

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander also had to acknowledge that part of what was fuelling him that night was his sense of having been betrayed, and his bitterness that life had once more cheated him of the prospect of companionship. He could not claim to miss Elvira herself. Her death had mainly frightened him. She had accessed his letter to the dating agency and had got on to him solely with the intention of tricking and manipulating him. And he had been thoroughly taken in. It had been a masterful performance. The shame was excruciating. The rage that coursed through him came from many different sources at once. Nevertheless, Hansson would later tell him how collected and calm he had seemed. His evaluation of the situation and his suggested course of action had been impressively swift.

  Wallander needed to get back to Ystad just as soon as possible. That was where the heart of the case still was. Hansson would stay in the house, alert the Malmö police and fill them in as necessary. Hansson was also to do something else. Wallander had been very firm on this point. Even though it was the middle of the night, he wanted Hansson to find out more about Elvira Lindfeldt's background. Was there anything that linked her to Angola? Who did she know in Malmö?

  "Who was she anyway?" Hansson said. "Why was Modin here? How did you know her?"

  Wallander didn't answer and Hansson never asked him the question again. Afterwards he would sometimes ask people about it when Wallander was not present. The fact was that Wallander must have known her since he placed Modin in her care. But no-one knew anything about this mysterious woman. Despite the investigations that they conducted there was always the sense that her relationship to Wallander was not a matter to be delved into. No-one ever found out exactly what had happened between them.

  Wallander left Hansson and returned to Ystad. He concentrated on a single question: what had happened to Modin? As he drove through the night he had a feeling that the impending catastrophe was very close. How he was going to prevent it or what it was exactly that needed to be prevented or stopped, he could not say. The important thing was saving Modin's life. Wallander drove at a ridiculous speed. He had asked Hansson to let the others know he was on his way. Hansson had asked if he should call and wake up Chief Holgersson and Wallander had lost his temper and shouted at him. He did not want him to call her.

  At 1.30 a.m. Wallander slowed down and turned into the station car park. He shivered from the cold as he ran to the front doors.

  The others were waiting for him in the conference room. Martinsson, Höglund and Alfredsson were already there, with Nyberg on his way. Höglund handed him a cup of coffee that he almost immediately managed to spill down the front of his trousers.

  Then he got down to business. Modin had disappeared and the woman he had been staying with had been found murdered.

  "The first conclusion we can draw," Wallander said, "is that the man in the field was not working alone. It was a fatal mistake to assume that that was the case. I should have realised it earlier."

  Höglund was the one who asked the inevitable question. "Who was she?"

  "Her name was Elvira Lindfeldt," Wallander said. "She was an acquaintance of mine."

  "How did she know Modin would be coming to her house tonight?"

  "We'll have to tackle that question later."

  Did they believe him? Wallander thought he had lied convincingly, but he couldn't tell. He knew he should have told them the truth about the ad to the dating agency and that someone must have broken into his computer and read the letter. But he didn't say any of these things. In his defence, at least what he tried to tell himself, the most important thing was finding Modin.

  At this point the door opened and Nyberg came in. His pyjama top peeked out from under his anorak.

  "What the hell happened?" he said. "Hansson called from Malmö and seemed to be out of his mind. Impossible to understand a single word he was saying."

  "Sit down," Wallander said. "It's going to be a long night."

  Then he nodded to Höglund, who summarised the situation for Nyberg.

  "Don't the Malmö police have their own forensic team?" Nyberg said.

  "I want you to go there," Wallander said. "Not only in case anything else turns up, but also because I need to hear what you think."

  Nyberg nodded without saying anything. Then he took out a comb and started pulling it through his unruly, thinning hair.

  Wallander continued. "There is one more conclusion we can draw from all this and it is quite simple: something else is going to happen. And this something is somehow rooted here in Ystad." He looked at Martinsson.

  "I take it someone is still stationed outside Runnerströms Torg?"

  "No, the surveillance has been called off."

  "On whose instructions?"

  "Viktorsson thought it was a waste of our resources."

  "Well, I want a car put back there immediately. I cancelled the surveillance of Apelbergsgatan, which was maybe a mistake. I think I want a car there too from now on."

  Martinsson left the room and Wallander knew that he would see that the patrol cars were dispatched immediately. They waited in silence for his return. Höglund offered Nyberg, who was still combing his hair, her make-up mirror so that he could see what he was doing, but he simply growled at her.

  Martinsson came back. "Done," he said.

  "What we're looking for is the catalyst," Wallander said. "It could be something as simple as Falk's death. At least, that's how I see it. As long as he was alive everything was in control. But then he died, and everything threatened to unravel."

  Höglund raised her hand. "Do we know for sure that Falk died from natural causes?"

  "I think it must have been natural causes. I believe that because Falk's death was unexpected. He was in excellent health. But he died, and that's what started the chain reaction. If Falk had lived, Hökberg would be tried and convicted of Lundberg's death. Neither she nor Landahl would have been killed. Landahl would have gone on running errands for Falk. And we would have had no idea of whatever it is that Falk and his associates were planning."

  "So it's only on account of his dying that we know something is going to happen, something that might affect the whole world?" Höglund said.

  "That's how I see it, yes. If someone else has a better hypothesis I would like to hear it."

  No-one had.

  Alfredsson opened his briefcase and tipped out a number of loose papers, some torn, some folded in half. "These are Modin's notes," he said. "They were lying in a corner. Do you think it's worth our while going through them?"

  "That's up to you and Martinsson," Wallander said. "You are the only two who would understand what he's talking about."

  The phone rang. Höglund answered it and handed the receiver to Wallander, saying it was Hansson.

  "A neighbour claims she heard a car drive away with squealing tyres at about 9.30 p.m.," he said. "But that's all we have been able to establish. No-one seems to have seen or heard anything else. Not even the shots."

  "There was more than one?"

  "The doctor says she was shot in the head twice. There are two entry wounds."

  Wallander felt sick to his stomach. He forced himself to swallow hard.

  "Are you still there?" Hansson said.

  "I'm here. No-one heard the shots?"

  "Not the immediate neighbours anyway, and they're the only ones we've had time to wake up so far."

  "Who is in charge down there?"

  "An officer called Forsman. I've never met him before."

  Wallander couldn't recall hearing the name either. "What does he say?"

  "He says he has trouble getting a coherent picture from what I tell him, there's no motive."

  "Placate him as best you can. We don't have time to brief him right now."

  "There was one more thing," Hansson said. "Didn't Modin say he was on his way here to collect some diskettes?"

  "That was what he said."

  "I think I know what room he was staying in, but there are no diskettes there."

  "He must
have taken them with him. Have you found anything else that belongs to him?"

  "Nothing."

  "Any sign that anyone else was in the house?"

  "One neighbour said that a taxi stopped at the house earlier in the day. A man got out."

  "Try to find that taxi. It could be important. Make sure Forsman makes that a priority."

  "You know I have no control over what police from another district choose to do or not to do."

  "Then you'll have to do this yourself. Did the witness give a description?"

  "All he said was that the man looked lightly dressed for the time of year."

  It's the man from Luanda, Wallander thought. The one whose name starts with C.

  "This is very important," Wallander repeated. "The taxi probably came from one of the ferry terminals, or from Sturup."

  "I'll do what I can."

  Wallander told the others. "I think the reinforcements have arrived," he said. "Probably from as far away as Angola."

  "I haven't been able to get one single answer to any of my inquiries," Martinsson said. "I've been researching sabotage and terrorist groups that go for financial targets. No-one seems to have any data on them."

  "You think people like that would be here in Ystad?" Nyberg put his comb down and stared disapprovingly at Wallander, who thought that Nyberg suddenly looked very old. Do the others see me in this way too?

  "A man originating somewhere from the Far East turns up dead in a field outside Sandhammaren," Wallander said. "He was claiming to be from Hong Kong, but we know this identity was forged. This is not the kind of thing that ought to be happening around here, but it does. There really are no longer any remote regions left. If I understand anything about the new technology, it is that it enables you to be at the centre of things from anywhere in the world."

  The phone rang. It was Hansson. "Forsman is actually pretty good," he said. "Things are moving right along. He's found the taxi."

  "Where did it come from?"

  "Sturup. You were right."

  "Has anyone spoken to the driver?"

  "He's right here. His shifts seem to be very long. Forsman says hello by the way. Apparently you met at a conference last spring."

  "Then give him my regards as well," Wallander said. "Let me talk to this driver."

  "His name is Stig Lunne. Here he is."

  Wallander signalled to the others to pass him a piece of paper and a pen. He told him who he was and what he wanted to know. The driver spoke with such a thick Skåne dialect that it was almost impossible, even with Wallander's experience, to understand him. But his answers were impressively concise. He picked his passenger up at 12.02 p.m. from Sturup. The job had not been booked in advance.

  "Can you describe your passenger?"

  "Tall."

  "Anything else?"

  "Thin."

  "Is that all? Is there anything else you might have noticed?"

  "Tan."

  "So this man was tall, thin and suntanned?"

  "Yes."

  "Did he speak Swedish?"

  "No."

  "What language did he speak?"

  "I don't know. He showed me a piece of paper with the address."

  Wallander sighed. He persevered and gathered that the man had been wearing a summer suit. He thanked the driver and asked him to be in touch if he thought of anything else.

  It was 3 a.m. Wallander passed on to the others Lunne's description. Martinsson and Alfredsson had some time ago left to go and read Modin's notes. Now they returned.

  "It's hard to get anything from Modin's notes," Alfredsson said. "He writes things like 'What we need to find is a coffee machine that's right under our noses'."

  "He's referring to the process that triggers the planned event," Wallander said. "We have talked about it, and it's probably something most of us do every day without thinking twice about it. When the right button is pushed at the right time and place, then something is set in motion."

  "What sort of button?" Höglund said.

  "That's what we were trying to work out."

  They kept talking. At 4.30 a.m. Hansson called again. Wallander made some notes. From time to time he asked a short question. The conversation lasted 15 minutes.

  "Hansson has managed to dig up a friend of Elvira Lindfeldt," Wallander said. "She had some interesting information for us. Apparently Lindfeldt worked in Pakistan for a couple of years during the seventies."

  "I thought we were still focused on Angola," Martinsson said.

  "The important thing is, what was she doing in Pakistan?" Wallander said, and looked closer at the back of the envelope on which he had made his notes. "According to this friend she was working for the World Bank. That gives us a connection. But there's more. The friend also said she expressed strange opinions from time to time. She was convinced that the whole financial order had to be restructured and that this could only be accomplished if the existing scheme of things was essentially torn down first."

  "There must be a number of people involved in this," Martinsson said. "Even if we still don't know where or who they are."

  "So we're looking for a button." Nyberg said. "Is that it? Or a lever? Or a light switch? But one that could be anywhere."

  "Correct."

  "So, in other words, we know nothing."

  The room was tense. Wallander looked at his colleagues with something that was nearing desperation. We're not going to make it, he thought. We're not going to find Modin in time.

  The phone rang again. Wallander had lost count of the times Hansson had called them.

  "Lindfeldt's car," he said. "We should have thought of it earlier."

  "Yes," Wallander said, "you're right."

  "It was normally parked on the street outside her house, but it's gone now. We've alerted the district. It's a dark blue VW Golf with the registration FHC 803."

  All the cars in this case seem to be dark blue, Wallander thought.

  It was 4.50 a.m. The feeling in the room was tired and heavy. Wallander thought they all looked defeated. No-one seemed to know what to do.

  Martinsson got up. "I have to have something to eat," he said. "I'm going down to the burger bar on Österleden. Does anyone want anything?"

  Wallander shook his head. Martinsson made a note of what the others wanted, then he left. A few seconds later he was back.

  "I don't have any money," he said. "Can anyone lend me some?"

  Wallander had 20 kronor. Strangely enough, no-one else had any cash.

  "I'll go by the cashpoint," Martinsson said and was gone again.

  Wallander stared blankly at the wall. His head was starting to hurt.

  But somewhere behind the growing headache an idea formed. He didn't know where it had come from, but suddenly he jumped up. The others stared at him.